Do you restart your client often? The debug.log is just a logfile that is recording events that your client considers notable, such as restarting. You can delete that without a hickup, and the client will just start another upon the next restart. blk0001.dat is the actual blockchain while blkindex.dat is the file that your client uses to quickly find a particular transaction within all those blocks. I would still recommend that you backup your wallet.dat file before deleting anything, though.

According to my process listing (I'm running this under Debian by the way) the client has been running 179 hours, about 7.5 days when I installed it. I just left it open and running on another desktop. I just closed it out and restarted it and it cleaned up about 800MB of data from the database directory. I opened up the debug.log and it appears to be a listing of all IRC traffic that the client generates. Perhaps the next client release can clean up this file as well when the client shuts down?

Do you restart your client often? The debug.log is just a logfile that is recording events that your client considers notable, such as restarting. You can delete that without a hickup, and the client will just start another upon the next restart. blk0001.dat is the actual blockchain while blkindex.dat is the file that your client uses to quickly find a particular transaction within all those blocks. I would still recommend that you backup your wallet.dat file before deleting anything, though.

According to my process listing (I'm running this under Debian by the way) the client has been running 179 hours, about 7.5 days when I installed it. I just left it open and running on another desktop. I just closed it out and restarted it and it cleaned up about 800MB of data from the database directory. I opened up the debug.log and it appears to be a listing of all IRC traffic that the client generates. Perhaps the next client release can clean up this file as well when the client shuts down?

The debug log exists for development reasons, and having the client automaticly delete the log upon exit would be self-defeating. I suppose that a startup batch script that destroys the existing debug.log file upon restart wouldn't be too dangerous. Or you could use the -noirc switch to disable the irc bootstrapping altogether. You only need it upon the initial startup of a fresh install, or if you wipe out your database. You don't really need it at all, it just makes finding the ip addresses of the first few connections easier. After that, node discovery is done via the p2p network itself. I always use -noirc. You need to do it if you are using tor or I2P, otherwise the irc code will just leak out your ip address anyway.

"The powers of financial capitalism had another far-reaching aim, nothing less than to create a world system of financial control in private hands able to dominate the political system of each country and the economy of the world as a whole. This system was to be controlled in a feudalist fashion by the central banks of the world acting in concert, by secret agreements arrived at in frequent meetings and conferences. The apex of the systems was to be the Bank for International Settlements in Basel, Switzerland, a private bank owned and controlled by the world's central banks which were themselves private corporations. Each central bank...sought to dominate its government by its ability to control Treasury loans, to manipulate foreign exchanges, to influence the level of economic activity in the country, and to influence cooperative politicians by subsequent economic rewards in the business world."

It did take me 12 hours to download all the blocks though. Isn't this going to become a huge issue for new users a couple of years from now when it takes days to download all the blocks? What if BTC is still around 100 years from now? How long will it take then?

There are other option available in the future. Including, but not limited to, simply including a recent copy of the blockchain in each new client release to be downloaded directly rather than over the p2p network and verified by each client upon first start. It's the verification process that takes most of the time, not the actual downloading.

Does that not introduce centralization?

Not really, because at this point the client will still verify all the blocks upon first start, regardless of where the blockchain came from. In the future, there are likely to be clients that come with a blockchain already in it and trust this included blockchain, but that would require trust in the client developers.

In the future, only a few pool owners, heavy miners, and people with a high number of bitcoins will actually store the blockchain, because it will reach into the TB's of size quite quickly. Most other users will connect to one or more of these blockchain holders to verify account balances using a lite client (chainless client).

At least, this is what I see happening if there is wider acceptance and use of bitcoins.

This needs to happen within 1 year given current transaction rates. Blocks have increased in size now that real transactions are being done and a small fraction of blocks (the new blocks) are taking up increasingly larger percentages of the total block size. Unless bitcoin is deserted, in 1 year it will take over 1 GB to download all of the blocks. No new users will participate if it takes 1 GB download just to start.

Unless bitcoin is deserted, in 1 year it will take over 1 GB to download all of the blocks. No new users will participate if it takes 1 GB download just to start.

The clock is ticking and what you describe needs to happen now.

Do you really think so? I download files larger than that via bittorrent for a few hours entertainment.

"The powers of financial capitalism had another far-reaching aim, nothing less than to create a world system of financial control in private hands able to dominate the political system of each country and the economy of the world as a whole. This system was to be controlled in a feudalist fashion by the central banks of the world acting in concert, by secret agreements arrived at in frequent meetings and conferences. The apex of the systems was to be the Bank for International Settlements in Basel, Switzerland, a private bank owned and controlled by the world's central banks which were themselves private corporations. Each central bank...sought to dominate its government by its ability to control Treasury loans, to manipulate foreign exchanges, to influence the level of economic activity in the country, and to influence cooperative politicians by subsequent economic rewards in the business world."

It did take me 12 hours to download all the blocks though. Isn't this going to become a huge issue for new users a couple of years from now when it takes days to download all the blocks? What if BTC is still around 100 years from now? How long will it take then?

There are other option available in the future. Including, but not limited to, simply including a recent copy of the blockchain in each new client release to be downloaded directly rather than over the p2p network and verified by each client upon first start. It's the verification process that takes most of the time, not the actual downloading.

Does that not introduce centralization?

Not really, because at this point the client will still verify all the blocks upon first start, regardless of where the blockchain came from. In the future, there are likely to be clients that come with a blockchain already in it and trust this included blockchain, but that would require trust in the client developers.

In the future, only a few pool owners, heavy miners, and people with a high number of bitcoins will actually store the blockchain, because it will reach into the TB's of size quite quickly. Most other users will connect to one or more of these blockchain holders to verify account balances using a lite client (chainless client).

At least, this is what I see happening if there is wider acceptance and use of bitcoins.

This needs to happen within 1 year given current transaction rates. Blocks have increased in size now that real transactions are being done and a small fraction of blocks (the new blocks) are taking up increasingly larger percentages of the total block size. Unless bitcoin is deserted, in 1 year it will take over 1 GB to download all of the blocks. No new users will participate if it takes 1 GB download just to start.

The clock is ticking and what you describe needs to happen now.

It is already in progress. Most of the code is there to allow a lite client, and the pressure will be on to complete it so Bitcoin can be used from mobile devices.

In principle, in order for your client to know for a fact that you have some number of bitcoins, it must trace the entire block hash from its creation to the creation of those bitcoins to the block containing the transaction that gave those coins to you. The current client actually does all of this. So if the bitcoins were transferred to you, they will show up when your client catches up. If they don't show up, the transaction could still be unverified. You can check for the complete transaction now using block explorer. The larger the transaction fee and the larger the transaction the sooner it shows up.

You need not be running a client to receive bitcoins. You needn't do anything special to receive bitcoins -- it's the sending that's the active process. Your client will detect them when it catches up to the block that included the transaction.

I am an employee of Ripple. Follow me on Twitter @JoelKatz1Joe1Katzci1rFcsr9HH7SLuHVnDy2aihZ BM-NBM3FRExVJSJJamV9ccgyWvQfratUHgN